After the past blog, which was about using the Twitter tool the right way, I decided to pay a little attention to the subject that really interests me: Business Intelligence (BI). How can Twitter be related to BI? Well, it’s all about concentrating information, like concentrating light with a magnifying glass, to form an interesting source of power. Most think that BI is a (software)tool that can be used to get the maximum effectiveness out of company generated information. For some companies BI is just that, due to the limitations it has to really implement BI. However, more and more companies implement the BI ideology whereby the way of steering the organization changes, like changing a boat for a car.
What is BI concretely ? Every organization has information and generates information about sales, costumers, products, etc. BI is the ‘dashboard’ of the organization which presents the current status. It is comparable with the dashboard of a car; its shows current speed, engine temperature, oil level, fuel level, etc.
Imagine a car without a dashboard or with a dashboard which only show the fuel level of last week…As illogic as it sounds that is the way many companies operate, they have to wait for reports which are outdate as soon as they leave the printer. The somewhat smarter managers extract information from databases which are presented in excel sheets and base their decisions on ad-hoc information that isn`t thought-trough properly. This could easily lead to wrong decisions, due to the complexity of most situations. The answer is a BI information system combined with the BI way of steering the organization.
The gasoline of the company is its information system whereby people act as the engine. Still many companies concentrate on improving the engine, while the quality of the gasoline could make a difference between optimal performances and jamming the engine.
In the next blog I will try to give some examples of companies that have implemented BI..
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